When Si Woo Kim’s ball rolled towards the hole on the par 4 2nd, it teetered on a knife’s edge. He waited with his caddy for roughly 55 seconds until it eventually fell in. The problem: official rules allow only 10 seconds wait time before it counts as another shot.
But if you follow the golf social media sphere, you’ll know that it wasn’t just Si Woo Kim who was unhappy about the rule, with many players, including Matt Kuchar, Kim’s playing partner, expressing their frustration at the seemingly arbitrary 10-second rule.
This begs the question, do the rules really make sense?
Well, in theory, of course they do. And the vast majority also work in practice. Golf would be a constant chaotic mess of confused players if none of the rules were reasonable or understandable.
However, the knee drop rule, for example, is definitely one of those rules that falls into the “unnecessarily strict” category. This rule, in case you don’t already know, means that players must re-drop their balls after an out-of-bounds shot from the height of their knee in standing position; and within one club-length from where it went out of bounds.
And that's already before you consider the different rules depending on where exactly the ball lands...
Rickie Fowler sparked a wave of press attention when he was given a penalty for dropping his ball from shoulder rather than knee height at the WGC-Mexico in 2019. He was reportedly unaware of the rule, which was brand new at the time. It didn’t stop officials from giving him a one-stroke penalty.
There are also a good handful of heated topics that many fear could one day lead to all sorts of frustrating, arbitrary rules that golfer must stick by.
For example, the age-old distance debate. Experts, analysts, and commentators have been asking this question for almost a century. The first mention of concerns about golfers, armed with new technology, hitting the ball “too far” was found in a newspaper article from 1936, according to Vox.
Between the launch of Titleist’s multi-layer core Pro V1 ball in 2000 or more recent incidents, such as Bubba Waston cutting the corner on the par 5 13th hole at the 2014 Masters, hitting his ball all the way over the trees to arrive directly in front of the green, this issue has already caused a fair bit of upset in the 21st century.
But for all the fuss, and even though some people, including Tiger Woods himself who called for the technology of balls to be rolled back to stop driving distances going too far, nothing has changed in the balls and older courses have been adapting for stronger players, not the other way around.
Another recent issue that springs to mind on this topic is the very recent calls for banning locked-arm putting (see Bryson DeChambeau), because of the advantage it gives players against those who putt traditionally.
Would banning certain golf balls or arm positions really help regulate the game or would it just be a temporary solution before creative players or equipment manufacturers find another way to increase their techniques?
